Most motherboards today are able to side-step these limitations in order to maintain a higher frequency like 4.9 GHz regardless of power usage. The frequencies we observed were 4.6 GHz in the AIDA64 stability test, 4.2 GHz in the FPU-only test, and way down to 3.8 GHz during our Prime95 small FFT test. When left at Intel’s default settings, the CPU would lower clocks and throttle because of the load. To give you an idea of what we mean here: During the review process, we stress test CPUs with AIDA64 stability at default and FPU-only settings plus we hammer it with Prime95 small FFTs.

If they’re not met the CPU will throttle. This CPU has 10 cores that are able to run at 4.9 GHz at stock given the right conditions, but Intel has placed strict rules on these conditions. The i9-10900K is the newest addition to the Intel mainstream CPU lineup and sits at the top of the product stack for good reason. This guide can help you overclock any other in the offering of Comet Lake desktop processors as well. One last thing we’ll touch on is software overclocking in Windows. We’ll also discuss different types of stability testing and their benefits or drawbacks, check if memory speed has an impact, and the different BIOS options we need to use in order to achieve a stable overclock. We’ll cover what’s needed in a motherboard and more importantly, considering the heat this CPU can generate, what type of cooling you’ll require.

Today we’re offering up some guidance for overclocking the 10-core, 20-thread Intel Core i9-10900K.

Asus intel extreme tuning utility